Professor Boaz Johnson Presents Focus Group on the Slums of India
Hundreds of CHIC participants filled the Alumni-Memorial Building’s auditorium for North Park Professor, Boaz Johnson’s, Focus Group Slumdog Professor meets Slumdog Millionaire.
Boaz begins with a fair warning to participants that his session is probably one of the harder Focus Groups of CHIC. “We come to CHIC and scream really loud, and go la la la la la la la, when David Crowder leads us in worship, which is wonderful,” laughed Boaz. “But we also have to realize that there is evil in the world that needs to be dealt with.”
Boaz gets started right away with a powerful scene from the movie Slumdog Millionaire which chronicles the life of a young man growing up in the slums of India. The only problem with the movie, according to Boaz, is that at the end of the movie when the main characters, Jamal and Latika, reuinte-they dance. “That is the problem with Hollywood!” said Boaz. “Here is a movie that goes in depth with real, hurting issues of the world and the solution that Hollywood offers is dancing.”
Being a person raised in the slums of New Delhi himself, Boaz shares a lot of his personal story and struggle. His parents, wanting to remove their children from the risk of being enslaved, traveled long distances everyday to enroll their children in Hindu school. He shared stories of people he knew who were taken and never to be seen again due to either contract slavery, debt slavery, or domestic slavery, where children would be taken and given false promises of unpaid work. Especially working in cocoa fields (the Ivory Coast’s main export).
A video showing the human trafficking and modern day slavery that is, without a doubt, happening in India assisted Boaz in getting his point across that there is a serious issue that needs to be worked out and prayed about. Today, there are twice as many slaves that are being traded than in the slave trades that happened hundreds of years ago. Children are often being kidnapped to be brought up in this slave trade. Everyday families are being torn apart and ripped of their heritage and identity.
In closing, Boaz charged us to be the ones in the world who when we buy clothes, we will make sure that there is, metaphorically, no blood on it. Or when we eat chocolate bars, we will make sure that there is no blood of the slaves on it. This focus group is partnered with a World Experience on Human Trafficking.
I would love to BOaz. I am working the Media the team here at CHIC, I worked on Call & Response the movie, and am shooting a movie in India this year. anyway to meet up???